SHARPE’S TRAFALGAR. Bernard Cornwell. Sharpe’s Trafalgar: Richard Sharpe and the Battle of Trafalgar, October 21, 1805

The midshipman scrambled up the companionway to the weather deck that shook from the recoil of its twenty-four-pounder guns. Wreckage of the rigging lay across the central part of the deck which was so thick with smoke that the midshipman climbed to the forecastle instead of to the quarterdeck. His ears were ringing with the sound of the guns and his throat was as dry as ash. He saw an officer in a red coat. “You’re wanted below, sir.”

“What?” Sharpe shouted.

“Marines, sir, needed below.” The boy’s voice was hoarse. “They’re coming through the gunports, sir. Lower deck.” A bullet smacked into the deck beside his feet, another ricocheted off the ship’s bell.

“Marines!” Sharpe bellowed. “Pikes! Muskets!”

He led his ten men down the companionway, stepped over the body of a powder monkey who lay dead though there was not a mark on his young body that Sharpe could see, then down to the hellish dark and thick gloom of the lower deck. Only half of the starboard cannons were firing now, and they were being impeded by the French who slashed through the gunports with cutlasses and pikes. Sharpe fired his musket through a gunport, glimpsed a Frenchman’s face dissolve into blood, ran to the next and used the butt of the empty musket to hammer an enemy’s arm. “Simmons!” he shouted at a marine. “Simmons!”

Simmons stared at him, wide-eyed. “Go to the forward magazine,” Sharpe shouted. “Fetch the grenades!”

Simmons ran, grateful for a chance to be beneath the water line even if only for an instant. Three of the Pucelle’s heavy guns fired together, their sound almost stunning Sharpe, who was going from gunport to gun-port and stabbing at the French with his cutlass. A huge crash, dreadful in its loudness and so prolonged that it seemed to go on forever, broke through Sharpe’s deafened ears and he reckoned a mast had gone overboard, though whether it was another of the Pucelle’s or one of the Revenant’s he could not tell. He saw a Frenchman ramming a cannon, half leaning out of the opposing gunport, and he skewered the man’s arm with the cutlass. The Frenchman sprang back and Sharpe skipped aside for he could see the gunner holding the linstock to the touch-hole. Sharpe registered that the French did not use flintlocks, was surprised to have noticed such a thing in battle, then the gun fired and the rammer, left in the barrel, disintegrated as it was driven across the Pucelle’s deck. A midshipman fired a pistol into an enemy gunport. A flintlock sparked and the sound of the heavy gun pounded Sharpe’s ears. Some of the men had lost the scarves they had tied about their heads and their ears dribbled blood. Others had bleeding noses caused by nothing more than the sound of the guns.

Simmons reappeared with the grenades and Sharpe took a linstock from one of the remaining water barrels, lit its fuse, then waited until the vagaries of the ocean swells brought a French gunport into view. The fuse sputtered. He could see the Revenant’s yellow planking, then the opposing ship ground against the Pucelle’s hull and a gunport came into sight and he hurled the glass ball into the Revenant. He dimly heard an explosion, saw flames illuminate the black smoke filling the enemy’s gundeck, then he left Simmons to throw the other grenades while he went back down the deck, stepping past bodies, avoiding the gunners, checking each gunport to make sure no more Frenchmen were trying to reach through with cutlass or pike. The big capstan in the middle of the deck, used to haul the ship’s anchor cables, had an enemy round shot buried in its wooden heart. Blood dripped from the deck above. A gun, crammed with grapeshot, recoiled across his path and Frenchmen screamed.

Then another scream pierced Sharpe’s ringing ears. It came from above, from the weather deck that was slick with so much blood that the sand no longer gave men a secure footing. “Repel boarders! Repel boarders!”

“Marines!” Sharpe shouted at his few men, though none heard him in the noise, but he reckoned some might follow if they saw him climb the companionway. He could hear steel striking steel. No time to think, just time to fight.

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